Our View: Elect Biden president to heal and unify our country - Vallejo Times-Herald

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It’s time to heal and work to unite the country. To stem the spread of the coronavirus, rebuild the economy, honestly confront racial and economic inequality, aggressively address climate change and reestablish the nation as a respected world leader.

For that, the United States needs a president who will put the country ahead of personal and political self-interests. Who believes in science. Who cares about people of all economic and racial backgrounds. Who has a history of reaching across the political aisle rather than demonizing those who disagree with him.

It’s time to elect Joe Biden.

He’s the candidate who wears a mask and recognizes that the pandemic will not magically disappear, supports the House extension of full unemployment benefit subsidies as the country faces massive unemployment, selected the first woman of color as a vice-presidential candidate for a major party and has a plan to reduce, not increase, the nation’s use of fossil fuels.

He’s the candidate who distinguishes between those legitimately protesting racial injustice and those who are simply looting — and doesn’t try to conflate the two to foment strife for political ends nor disseminate discredited conspiracy theories to sow division.

Perhaps it had to be Biden in the role of the dragon slayer, taking down the horror show that is the Trump presidency. He is at his core a man of decency, honor and integrity. He is a hard-working, caring, knowledgeable and empathetic leader — attributes that help make him a far superior choice to President Donald Trump.

Remember the stakes
Whichever candidate wins on Inauguration Day — Biden, who will be 78, or Trump, 74 — will be the oldest person to start a presidential term. So the vice-presidential candidates matter, too.

Oakland-born Sen. Kamala Harris probably would not have been our top choice during the March primary had she made it that far. We backed her when she ran successfully in 2016 to represent California in the Senate. Since then, California’s former attorney general has proven to be a liberal, but cautious, senator and more moderate and incremental presidential candidate whose prosecutorial skills have enabled her to pierce evasive opponents.

Her counterpart, Vice President Mike Pence, has been an enabler of the Trump presidency. As the leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Pence pushed for reopening the economy by falsely claiming the nation had adequate testing supplies. To bolster the president’s narrative of dangers in U.S. cities, Pence tried to link the killing of a federal security officer to racial justice demonstrations in Oakland, even though the man charged had expressed allegiance to a right-wing extremist group.

We now know what a Trump presidency is like. Admit it. You can’t keep track of the number of times Trump has embarrassed himself — and more importantly, this country — just in the last month alone. The tweets, the controversies, the outrageous statements, the hypocrisy, the toxic narcissism, the lies — thousands of them now in some four years — all blend into each other, forgotten in a haze by the next news cycle, when, like clockwork, he delivers yet another head-shaking embarrassment.

For the record, the last month alone has seen the disparagement of our military, news of his alarming personal debt and payment of income taxes, his latching on to conspiracy theories like the one where Osama bin Laden is still alive, his declaration that the deadly coronavirus “doesn’t really affect anybody,” audio-tape showing that while he was offering his rosy projections of a “disappearing” coronavirus in public, he knew of its deadly power in January, his refusal on a national debate stage to condemn a white supremacy group …

What’s that? More? The absurd farce that is QAnon, anyone?

Remember? Remember the teargassing of protesters for that offensive, ridiculous photo op with a Bible? Simpler times.

Remember Trump rolling over on the international stage to Putin, throwing our hard-working, talented intelligence agencies under the bus, while free nations everywhere looked on in horror, and the Russian thug looked on in delight.

Not only is he not up to the job, he is undeserving of the job. He is unfit for the presidency. He has quite literally proven it too many times to keep track of.

That’s why politicians as diverse as U.S. senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the left and Republicans including retired Gen. Colin Powell, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman all support Biden. Former GOP Chairman Michael Steele joined the ever-growing list just this week.

That’s why more than 70 of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials and former members of Congress say they will vote for Biden. In a joint statement, they said, “Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character and competence to lead this nation and has engaged in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as President.”

They’re right.

For those who insist on a candidate perfectly aligned with their personal politics, it’s important to remember the wide policy gulfs between the candidates. And it’s important to remember the stakes — starting with the future of our democracy.

Biden calls for increased access to mail-in balloting so voters don’t have to choose during a pandemic between their health and exercising their constitutional right. He’s the one calling for strengthening the postal service so it can handle the additional load.

Trump, in contrast, is trying to dismantle it, makes false claims of voter fraud to suppress turnout, tries to undermine the census count to diminish the political strength of poor people and immigrants, and uses military deployment of chemical spray and rubber bullets to part peacefully assembled protesters so he can pose for a photo op.

Since the last election
It’s stunning to think about what we have witnessed since the last election. Trump survived impeachment not because there was any doubt he sought political favors from Ukraine in exchange for taxpayer-funded international aid but because Senate Republicans didn’t consider those actions an impeachable offense.

The United States became the world leader in coronavirus cases and deaths. Rather than address the crisis of protective equipment and testing supplies, Trump recommends debunked remedies and ignores his top medical advisers. He obsesses with turning around the collapsing economy to boost his reelection prospects while ignoring that an economic recovery hinges on controlling COVID-19.

Meanwhile, during a national health crisis, Trump continues to undermine efforts to provide medical coverage to all Americans. While Biden seeks to strengthen Obamacare, Trump keeps trying to dismantle it and replace it with … well, after four years, we still don’t know what he wants to replace it with.

The Trump administration spent billions of dollars of military funds to build a border wall — for some reason Mexico never paid for it. Thousands of immigrant children were separated from their parents. Then came the sickening news that 545 of those scared, innocent children still don’t know where their parents are. And the president continues to defy the courts as he freezes a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that protects young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Trump has eviscerated foreign policy successes of the Obama-Biden administration. He is pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and is now so isolated that last month he could muster only one vote of support at the United Nations Security Council for extending an arms embargo on Iran.

Rather than strengthening ties with our European allies, Trump bullies them. During a pandemic, he pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization. He’s cozied up to Vladimir Putin and, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia tried to influence the 2016 elections, still considers the inquiry into the allegations a “Witch Hunt Hoax.” And he abandoned the Kurds in northern Syria, our key ally in the fight against ISIS.

Despite his false claim that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump struck out in his quest for a deal with Kim Jong Un, who appears to be ramping up his weapons capability again. And relations with China, the world’s second-largest economy, are at their lowest point in decades.

‘A different path’
We can — and we must — do better.

Trump says, “This is the most important election in the history of our country.”

Biden says, “We’re in a battle for the soul of our nation.”

They’re both right. But while Trump uses his words to divide the country, Biden’s language is aimed at bringing us back together.

At Thursday night’s final debate, while Trump continually went back to his bashing of “blue” states, as if their citizens’ lives matter less, the statesman across the stage remind us that we are “not the red states or the blue states. We are the United States.”

While Trump lashes out at Democrats and the party’s mayors and falsely tries to portray Biden as a socialist, the former vice president is calling for the nation to rise above the partisanship.

Biden, who served 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight as vice president, has a well-deserved reputation for working on bipartisan deals, like his 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which reframed the nation’s approach to domestic violence, and his shepherding and overseeing of the 2009 economic recovery act that was key to the country’s recovery from the Great Recession.

“While I’ll be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president,” Biden promised. “I’ll work hard for those who didn’t support me, as hard for them as I did for those who did vote for me.”

That’s what we would expect from either a Republican or Democratic president. Unfortunately, that’s not what we’ve seen with the current administration.

This nation deserves better.

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